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Episode: TikTok Ban Looms, Trump's AI and Crypto Czar, and Guest Vivian Tu

Author: New York Magazine
Duration: 01:16:28

Episode Shownotes

Kara and Scott discuss TikTok's latest legal setback, and what Donald Trump will do (if anything) if the ban goes into effect next month. Then, Trump appoints investor, podcaster, and Elon minion, David Sacks, as the new "White House AI and crypto czar." Will this position have any real power?

Plus, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield backs away from a controversial plan to only pay for anesthesia for a limited amount of time. Our Friend of Pivot is Vivian Tu, host of the Vox Media podcast "Networth and Chill." Vivian goes by "Your Rich BFF" on social media, where she's become a financial guru, dispensing advice and tips to millions. Follow Vivian at @your.richbff Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. Follow us on Bluesky at @pivotpod.bsky.social Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Summary

In this episode of 'Pivot,' Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway discuss TikTok's looming ban amid ongoing legal challenges, emphasizing the tension around tech regulation. They explore the implications of Trump's potential actions and his appointment of David Sacks as the AI and crypto czar, highlighting concerns over conflicts of interest. The episode also touches on Anthem Blue Cross's healthcare policy reversal and the need for balanced financial regulations. Guest Vivian Tu, known as 'Your Rich BFF,' shares insights on accessible financial education, addressing disparities in traditional finance media coverage and empowering young individuals to make informed financial decisions.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (TikTok Ban Looms, Trump's AI and Crypto Czar, and Guest Vivian Tu) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:01 Speaker_03
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00:01:13 Speaker_03
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00:01:22 Speaker_09
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00:02:03 Speaker_03
Hi, everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

00:02:08 Speaker_09
And I'm Scott Galloway.

00:02:09 Speaker_03
Where are you, Scott? Today, where are you? I'm in San Francisco. I just got here last night.

00:02:14 Speaker_09
I'm in the UK. I'm at a hotel around the street from the place I'm supposed to be moving in that isn't ready. And I just got back from a shoot. I was at a castle where we went and I did not because fortunately I'm a terrible shot.

00:02:30 Speaker_03
Oh, a shoot shoot, like with guns. Oh, not like a TV shoot. I was like, you always do a TV shoot.

00:02:35 Speaker_09
It's a big deal. No, no, no. I was at Hackfield and then it was so much fun.

00:02:40 Speaker_09
I was with these, I met so many impressive guys and couples here in London, but my one friend Tor and his wife Kristen, they love this and they love kind of old British culture and they do these shoots.

00:02:55 Speaker_09
And it's not my, I gotta be honest, this is not my thing. But they were just so happy to show us it, and it was just nice. You know when your friends are just so excited to show you something? So it was really enjoyable.

00:03:08 Speaker_09
The best part about the whole shoot was after these birds dropped from the sky. That always, but I don't know if I told you this, I've substantially reduced my alcohol intake. is the dogs, these beautiful hunting dogs go and grab the birds.

00:03:24 Speaker_09
And it was in the countryside, it's beautiful.

00:03:27 Speaker_03
Was it quail? My uncle, my aunt's husband, he's since died, was a big hunter with dogs and he raised those dogs and sold them to people, those pointers and everything. They were gorgeous, those dogs, they were gorgeous.

00:03:39 Speaker_03
He did quail hunting, that's what he did. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today, including TikTok's latest legal setback and Trump's new AI and crypto czar. Someone, not a fave of Kara Swisher's, but oh well. Plus, our friend of Pivot is Vivian Tu.

00:03:52 Speaker_03
She's the host of the Vox Media podcast, Net Worth and Chill. And she's built a huge following on social media, where she goes by yourrichbff, giving financial advice to millions, sort of like a female Scott.

00:04:05 Speaker_09
Except she's very good. Have you seen her stuff? She's great.

00:04:09 Speaker_03
No, but I'm excited. This is a suggestion by you, I believe. Anyway, but first, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has placed Google under federal supervision.

00:04:18 Speaker_03
The agency specifically had concerns with Google Pay, which was largely shut down earlier this year. The move could subject Google to regular inspections and monitoring, typical in banks.

00:04:27 Speaker_03
Google filed an immediate lawsuit against the agency to block its oversight. Well, it's anti-regulatory time. So I guess they're going to try to do, you know, do they're trying to get this.

00:04:37 Speaker_03
Elon's trying to get rid of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. We'll see if he can do that. But what do you think of this?

00:04:43 Speaker_09
You go first here.

00:04:44 Speaker_03
I don't I think they're trying to do things before Trump gets in here and denuders this entire thing. I mean,

00:04:50 Speaker_03
What's incredible is all these companies wanna be banks, wanna be this, wanna be that, wanna do money, but they don't want any regulation whatsoever that everyone else is subject to.

00:04:59 Speaker_03
And while there might be too much regulation on banks or whatever, you know what happens when there isn't. And so they'll do anything possible to push back on any possible protection of consumers in any aspect of their businesses.

00:05:14 Speaker_03
no matter what it is, whether it's teens becoming depressed or killing themselves, whether it's banks that could be dangerous. They don't want any monitoring whatsoever. And that's the trend that's going forward. I don't know what else to say.

00:05:26 Speaker_03
I think it's, you know, it's the last, this group is probably worried about what's to come. We'll see what's going to happen. Thoughts?

00:05:33 Speaker_09
One of the things, I'm following Doge closely, but one of the things that is sort of innovative is I do think on a regular basis, you need to dramatically reduce the amount of regulation.

00:05:42 Speaker_09
And their response to, okay, 80% of government spending is just not on the table. You just can't, there's no real way to cut most of it.

00:05:52 Speaker_09
If you take out entitlements and you take out defense spending and interest on our debt, you're kind of left with 20% to kind of go after this efficiency, if you will.

00:06:04 Speaker_09
What they've been saying, and it is interesting, is that the Chevron Act, where you don't immediately defer to the agency, that you can strip out regulation, that if you strip out regulations, it just reduces friction and costs.

00:06:16 Speaker_09
And I think there's some value there. What people don't celebrate is regulation. So since 2008, we have not had a financial crisis. We had a run that was basically inspired by a bunch of 50 plus year old venture capitalists in a panic room

00:06:33 Speaker_09
looking for attention, trying to create a run on banks such that their crypto investments would go up. But the market proved incredibly resilient, and SVB was ring-fenced. The FDIC did its job.

00:06:45 Speaker_09
But since Sarbanes-Oxley, and since we've had stress tests on banks,

00:06:52 Speaker_09
we have had a remarkably robust banking sector, JP Morgan is now worth more than the top 10 European banks, that does thread the needle, I think, between one, ensuring that they don't collapse and over lever and create a financial crisis, but also you need a little bit of risk-taking in the banking system, because the modern marvel of the banking system is with $100 in deposits, as long as you don't take too many deposits from the same people, you can lend out $120.

00:07:22 Speaker_09
and you create growth. It's like levered growth with a decent amount of risk controls. So regulation can be a wonderful thing. And these individuals are never going to suggest more regulation. They're just very much anti-regulation.

00:07:37 Speaker_09
These are risk aggressive people who see regulation as the enemy. And I think you just need a more balanced approach, recognizing that some regulation creates scale and growth. So anyways, it's a long-winded way of saying, I really don't know.

00:07:52 Speaker_03
I think this always goes back and forth, but these people are particularly resistant to any regulation whatsoever. I mean, these people hate regulation, no matter what. It doesn't matter what you say to them.

00:08:01 Speaker_03
They would serve you tainted meat if they could, honestly, sometimes. I think I agree with you. It goes back and forth, and things can be overregulated.

00:08:10 Speaker_03
But I think what happened with the SEC, and crypto, for example, has gotten this taste in their mouth that they really don't want any. And that's what's going to happen in the new administration.

00:08:19 Speaker_03
They're going to just strip regulation after regulation, and then there's going to lead to a crisis of some sort, because it always does. I think it'll be over by the time Trump gets in. And anyway, we'll see what happens to this board.

00:08:30 Speaker_03
Omnicom Group has agreed to acquire Interpublic Group in a deal that would create the world's largest advertising company. Scott, I really wanted to hear your thoughts on this. Interpublic has a market value of $11 billion.

00:08:40 Speaker_03
The two combined would have a net revenue of more than $20 billion. Omnicom and Interpublic are currently third and fourth biggest companies, respectively. Will this go through?

00:08:49 Speaker_03
I mean, I know advertising groups like this are under an enormous amount of pressure. But thoughts, is it bad for advertising or just helping them keep up?

00:08:58 Speaker_03
It reminds me a little bit of Hollywood companies with tech companies coming in and just eating their lunch in so many ways. So they have to bulk up. I don't know, thoughts?

00:09:07 Speaker_09
It's exactly right. This is about survival and consolidation. My first company, I started my second year in business school, was a firm called Profit Brand Strategy, and we were effectively

00:09:19 Speaker_09
a services company helping companies manage their brands as assets. We didn't do any design or advertising. We were trying to take a strategy approach, just focused on brands as assets. And I was always very economically driven.

00:09:32 Speaker_09
I'm like, okay, I'm gonna build this thing for five years and then sell it. And the 10-ton gorillas, the masters of the universe of the entire communications and media world were Omnicom, IPG, and WPP. And then publicity was kind of in the mix.

00:09:47 Speaker_09
And then there were some new ones that popped up.

00:09:49 Speaker_03
I think WPP is the biggest now, right? WPP.

00:09:52 Speaker_09
WPP, I still think it's the biggest, and these two combined would surpass WPP.

00:09:58 Speaker_09
And they basically, their model was take advantage of this algorithm that was the algorithm for creating shareholder value, and that was find a mediocre product and infuse it

00:10:08 Speaker_09
with amazing brand codes of masculinity, maternal love, European elegance, sex appeal, and then use this incredibly efficient mechanism called broadcast television where we managed to get 80% of Americans in front of one of three outlets five hours a day and print money.

00:10:25 Speaker_09
And then that era came to an end, the brand era came to an end in 1995, when all of a sudden these weapons of mass diligence called Google, TripAdvisor, your social graph, you no longer needed to defer to the shorthand of the brand.

00:10:38 Speaker_09
And also people found it was much easier to fill the customer funnel, if you will, with people based on their behavior, specifically if they indicated

00:10:48 Speaker_09
Audi Q5 best price into my Google search bar means I'm looking for a car, and this person is worth a lot of money to Audi. And you have seen such a tectonic tsunami-like transfer of money, capital, and power.

00:11:03 Speaker_09
These guys, Cara, you've been to Cannes with me. These guys used to be the gods of Cannes.

00:11:09 Speaker_02
The gods, yep.

00:11:10 Speaker_09
And now- Best parties. Yeah, and now they have a beach chair, but they don't have a beach party. They're a shadow of themselves. Google loses the value of all three of these companies or gains it in a trading day.

00:11:27 Speaker_09
But they're still very talented, still very creative. But the reality is, The brand era is not only over, Don Draper has been drawn and quartered.

00:11:36 Speaker_09
So the idea that they absolutely need to consolidate, cut jobs at headquarters just for survival mode, because these have not been good performers. These have been terrible places to work or invest.

00:11:48 Speaker_03
Let me ask you this question, because whenever I went to those parties or talked to them, I'm always like, what do you do exactly? And they explained it to me. I'm like, what do we need you for? Even back then, I was like, aren't you the middleman?

00:11:59 Speaker_03
Aren't you between me and the sponsor? It was really interesting. Even me, little Kara Swisher, was like, with a small little business, I was like, I feel like I don't need to pay you more and more.

00:12:11 Speaker_03
I know it sounds crazy, but they seemed not useful in ways that technology would take care of. I always used to think that.

00:12:19 Speaker_09
You still need them. I think of this. There was this incredibly moving ad last year by Norwich City or Norwich City Football, but it showed these two men who go to a soccer game together. And one's effusive and super, super outgoing and funny.

00:12:33 Speaker_09
And the other looks just sort of morbid and depressed. And it shows them going to another game. And the one seat is empty, the guy who was really effusive and happy.

00:12:41 Speaker_09
And it says something along the lines of, ask your friends how they're doing, because you may not really know how they're doing. And it was so incredibly moving. And ad agencies and creatives still are the domain of breakthrough emotion that moves you.

00:12:57 Speaker_03
Did you see the AI ad that Coke did? Just curious.

00:13:00 Speaker_09
That was good, but even better, they add that Apple just did. I mean, occasionally these folks come up with something that just really moves the needle. In addition, even Google needs help figuring out how to allocate.

00:13:13 Speaker_09
When Google does their beach and spends $40 million having Lenny Kravitz play and and not inviting Scott Galloway, they need an ad agency or a creative agency to come up with all the branding, make sure the beach looks branded.

00:13:28 Speaker_09
There are agencies doing everything. When I go to all these conferences and speak, there's an agency figuring out how to bring Dreamforce alive and represent Salesforce in the future.

00:13:40 Speaker_03
I get it. When I said AI, there was an ad made by Coca-Cola by AI, and it wasn't bad. I have to say, it wasn't bad.

00:13:49 Speaker_09
But they still need someone to come up with the ideas. They still need design. They still need even spending money. Once you get to a certain point, I'll give you an example. I think podcasts, our business, are about to go through a reshuffling.

00:14:02 Speaker_09
And the reshuffling, I think, is gonna be based on who does the best job using this new distribution mechanism for a podcast that is bigger than Spotify or Apple, and it's YouTube. Joe Rogan gets 15 million downloads of his interview with Trump.

00:14:14 Speaker_09
He got 40 million on YouTube.

00:14:16 Speaker_09
I'm thinking about hiring a small agency to help me figure out how to get Prop G and Pivot and other people to scale our distribution on YouTube, because there are little niche agencies that just are better at it than we are.

00:14:32 Speaker_09
And there's always opportunity for customer acquisition, branding, events.

00:14:37 Speaker_09
It's just no longer the heyday of, hey, you're General Motors, you're gonna spend a billion dollars running ads, and I'm gonna take 12% of it by pitching you the next big Don Draper idea. Those days are over.

00:14:49 Speaker_03
I thought they were so small when I saw the numbers. I was like, whoa, these are really small businesses. It did remind me of Hollywood. It did, like, oh.

00:14:56 Speaker_09
In the time I've been going to Cannes, Maurice Levy, the CEO of Publicy, has gone from fucking James Bond, who ran the place and Martin Sorrell was the master of the universe, to almost sort of like cute and majestic and sentimental, right?

00:15:12 Speaker_09
They're just, they are no longer, quite frankly, they're no longer players. I know that's terrible to say. And Sir Martin is one of the brightest minds in the history of media.

00:15:23 Speaker_03
It is. It does feel like old Hollywood. It does. Speaking of regulators, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield has backed off a controversial plan to only pay for anesthesia for a limited amount of time.

00:15:34 Speaker_03
In case you wake up, the insurer initially announced the plan in mid-November. But as outrage over health care became front page news last week, outrage over the decision

00:15:42 Speaker_03
grew, politicians including New York Governor Kathy Hochul got involved causing reversal.

00:15:47 Speaker_03
This is a moment for, because of this Brian Thompson murder, I think you're going to see a lot of awareness on the behalf of healthcare companies of the heartlessness that they display towards people.

00:16:02 Speaker_03
We'll see if there'll be changes, how many politicians will get involved, I'm not sure. But certainly it's a moment, it's certainly a moment that some line has been crossed here.

00:16:13 Speaker_03
That I think the anger on one side and the relentless pursuit of profits by these companies is sort of meeting each other rather significantly.

00:16:25 Speaker_09
This is, I mean, it's weird. Bashar al-Assad fleeing to Moscow is really big news. It doesn't get enough attention. But one of the most interesting discussions catalyzed by a murder is the CEO of UnitedHealthcare.

00:16:41 Speaker_09
And the reaction online was just stunning to me. And it made me realize that, you know, someone pointed out that Elon Musk said a revolution is inevitable or civil war is inevitable. Well, 50,000 people killed themselves in America last year.

00:16:55 Speaker_09
And I wonder how many of those people killed themselves because of financial strain in large part created by medical debt. And also there's just no getting around it.

00:17:05 Speaker_09
If you look at the insurance industry, especially the healthcare insurance industry, they have figured out that a decent way to add earnings and shareholder value is to come up with algorithms and sophisticated legal ways of denying coverage to people, which has created a lot of despair.

00:17:20 Speaker_09
And I mean, you've seen the tweets like empathy is outside my coverage.

00:17:24 Speaker_03
Listen, everyone experiences it. Someone's like, you never experienced it.

00:17:28 Speaker_03
I'm like, I literally spent all the last three, I have some procedures arguing with insurance companies, like a lot in a very irritating way of very important tests for me, you know, as an older lady. So it's, I get the, I don't get the murder.

00:17:44 Speaker_03
I get the rage at the same time, but go ahead.

00:17:47 Speaker_09
The seminal moment in my life that was both horrifying and motivating was as a young male until the age of like 25, I was sleepwalking through life. Underachiever, got into UCLA because they accepted 76% of people.

00:18:03 Speaker_09
Graduated from UCLA with a 2.27 GPA, talked my way into Morgan Stanley, somehow got into Berkeley Graduate School because the standards were so much lower back then.

00:18:12 Speaker_09
When I got that call from my mother in my first year in graduate school and said, you need to come home. And I walked into a house where my mother after her second mastectomy had been discharged early by Kaiser, we were underinsured.

00:18:25 Speaker_09
And I walked into a situation. of the likes of which I had never seen before and I could not handle. And I started calling nurses and said, I need to get someone over here immediately, because this hospital wouldn't take her back.

00:18:36 Speaker_09
So they're like, call an ambulance. My mom's like, don't call an ambulance. And nurses were 35 bucks an hour and our insurance didn't cover it. And I didn't have that money.

00:18:44 Speaker_09
I remember thinking, and it was literally like at that moment, I thought, no one can decide to be rich, but I thought, I'm gonna work so fucking hard from this point forward, because I can control that.

00:18:57 Speaker_09
the most frightening moment of my life, the first 25 years of my life, and something that was, quite frankly, exceptionally motivating, was my mother being underinsured.

00:19:08 Speaker_09
Because, I mean, you wanna talk about fucking with a young man's sense of well-being when you can't take care of your mother, your sick mother, and times that by 10 million,

00:19:19 Speaker_09
That is what has happened when you insert a profit motive into something as important as health care. And the reason why we're the only major democracy that focuses on shareholders as opposed to the well-being of consumers.

00:19:34 Speaker_03
That story is devastating. I can't imagine young Scott Gellar dealing with that.

00:19:38 Speaker_03
And I do have more means, but I have to say most of the most frustrating times of my life are dealing with health care, whether it's appointments, whether it's getting information, whether it's understanding it.

00:19:49 Speaker_03
And let me just say, I am an irritating person. True that. And I'm educated. Every time I do this, I think, what if you couldn't understand it? I find dealing with computer fix-it things easier than that.

00:20:06 Speaker_03
And you're just confused, and you're turned around, and you get a stupid no, and then you have to call and argue with them.

00:20:13 Speaker_03
It is, it got me, it's like literally the most frustrating part of dealing with having lots of kids and getting them healthcare, whether it's dental or whatever. Nobody understands it.

00:20:24 Speaker_03
It's so, I'm always working over money, even though I have insurance, and always arguing over care. And I am the lucky one.

00:20:33 Speaker_09
There are a few industries that are more advanced, technically, make more money, and are a larger source of despair and suffering.

00:20:42 Speaker_09
And this has come to a head, and it all comes down to the same thing, and that is a $10,000 reward for information leading to his arrest. Most people can't buy health insurance for their family for $10,000. People pointed that out, yeah.

00:20:57 Speaker_09
And when you're living in a society with all this prosperity, And it is a regular occurrence that, oh, I got bad news, your wife has lung cancer, I got worse news, it probably means you're gonna go bankrupt.

00:21:07 Speaker_09
and we're the wealthiest society in the world. It's like one of these things does not foot to the other. This has inspired, and all of these tech executives, and quite frankly, I'm guilty of this. I was horrified by it.

00:21:19 Speaker_09
And it's like, the people who are most horrified by this are insured wealthy people. Because since then, hundreds of people have killed themselves. Hundreds of non-white kids in terrible areas have been murdered.

00:21:32 Speaker_09
And a CEO gets murdered, and it's horrifying, and we're all clutching our pearls. It has really inspired an overdue conversation.

00:21:41 Speaker_03
It has. It has. I think you can have two things happening at once. You can be horrified by this. Sure.

00:21:49 Speaker_03
Unfortunately, everything gets reduced, you're either against this murder and therefore a rich person doesn't understand, or you understand what happens. I do think it's a warning signal, the fact that this guy is becoming an unfortunate folk hero.

00:22:02 Speaker_09
What will be really interesting is what the jury decides. Won't it be interesting what happens at the jury trial?

00:22:07 Speaker_03
Yes. Yes. It had a lot of, you know, O.J. vibe to it in that regard. Right. It had a kind of that you deserve this kind of thing. Anyway, we'll see. It's going to be an ongoing story. And these companies are certainly on notice, that's for sure.

00:22:24 Speaker_03
Anyway, let's get to our first big story. A federal appeals court has upheld a law that could lead to TikTok getting banned next month if TikTok parent company ByteDance does not divest.

00:22:36 Speaker_03
A panel of three judges denied TikTok's petition last week, saying ByteDance's ownership represents a national security threat, rejecting the argument the law violates the First Amendment, that national security trumps the First Amendment in this case.

00:22:48 Speaker_03
TikTok has just asked the appeals court to temporarily block or pause the law so the Supreme Court can review the case. It'll be interesting to see. What do you think of the ruling? It's not clear what Trump will do, or if he can do anything.

00:23:01 Speaker_03
It's a law. They're going to have to change the law, as many in Congress pointed out, which he certainly can do with control of the House and Senate.

00:23:10 Speaker_03
He's been a big flip-flopper on TikTok because one of his biggest donors was a big TikTok investor, Jeff Yass. I don't know if there's a buyer. There's several buyers. Bobby Kotick is in there. Frank McCourt seems to be in there.

00:23:22 Speaker_03
Steve Mnuchin has been in there. I don't see the Chinese letting this happen, but there's a lot of winners who have emerged.

00:23:30 Speaker_03
Let me just, and then on your thoughts, Scott, Metashares rose 2.4% and closed at a record high on Friday following the news of this ruling, and SnapShares are very up. It's real, because they're obviously the original version of this.

00:23:44 Speaker_03
I think they're all hoping the ban happens, but will it? Thoughts? And it is unclear what Trump can do, but it's certainly onerous, the stuff he's got to do. And then there's the Supreme Court, obviously, who's going to take this up, no question.

00:23:55 Speaker_09
Well, I've been advocating for and predicting the following, that it would be banned. and that ultimately it'll be spun. The U.S. interests of TikTok are worth, U.S. TikTok is worth $100 billion.

00:24:08 Speaker_03
Owners, you're saying U.S. owners, just to be clear for listeners.

00:24:12 Speaker_09
Divested to U.S. ownership. I think there's so much money involved that they'll figure it out. Look, I generally find 95% of the time, you're right, if you just go follow the money. And to, I mean, there's a couple of things.

00:24:28 Speaker_09
One, going back to Trump, he could just not enforce it. He could say, wink, wink, to different, I'm never gonna enforce this, or I'm gonna tell my AG to never pursue anyone if they violate it.

00:24:41 Speaker_09
Because basically what it would, the people who have to comply here who have the most power would be Apple or Alphabet to make the app no longer work in their app store. but he could also say this will never be enforced.

00:24:55 Speaker_09
There's some elegant ways around it. I don't think he's going to do that because I think it gives him leverage against the Chinese. And also, it's a goodie he'll be able, now that we've gone full kleptocrat, it's a goodie he can hand out to a U.S.

00:25:07 Speaker_09
consumer. But I've always predicted two things. One, that one, it should be banned, and I believe it will be. And two, we're not going to lose our TikTok. That at some point, there's so much money here. There's so many U.S.

00:25:19 Speaker_09
investors who are going to make so much money or lose so much money that they will figure out with the White House, maybe they give him 10 billion or his buddies 10 billion or the 100 billion, but they will figure out a way to accommodate everybody and spin it and divest it.

00:25:34 Speaker_09
There is too much money on the line here. And in addition, you have a China where the economy isn't struggling. Doug Guthrie, who I think is the brightest mind on China, U.S.-China relations, he called me and said, Scott, you don't get it.

00:25:47 Speaker_09
They're kind of fine to let this stuff roll. They're not doing as poorly as people think. But I still think there is so much money involved that they're gonna figure out a way to divest it to U.S. interests or do enough to satisfy the quote-unquote ban.

00:26:01 Speaker_09
But I mean, it's already happened technically. I mean, he would have to change the law And I don't think he has the attention or the desire to do that. What do you think?

00:26:11 Speaker_03
I don't know. I think it was I think they have to do that. Right. I think I think the Supreme Court is the one that's going to weigh in here.

00:26:17 Speaker_09
The Supreme Court might not might not even agree to listen to the case.

00:26:20 Speaker_03
Well, I think they're going to. I talked to a bunch of lawyers this week, and they all said yes, they were going to, that they thought they were going to. So it's too good. It's too good a one. You know what I mean? There's a lot happening here.

00:26:31 Speaker_03
It's national security versus First Amendment versus ownership and capitalism. There's too much good stuff in here for them not to weigh in. I don't know. That was the thoughts of people who watch this stuff when I talk to them.

00:26:44 Speaker_03
If they do, it'll be interesting. I mean, I think they can change the law. That's what I understand. I think you can't do this by executive order at this point.

00:26:53 Speaker_03
Again, enforcement is one thing, but there's too much attention on this thing and too many financial interests at stake. They'd have to find a settlement. The question is the Chinese are the wild card here. How are they going to react?

00:27:04 Speaker_03
They certainly have been hostile to this for a long time. And then is it worth anything, as I told you, Mark Cuban pointed out to me, is it worth anything without the algorithm? And what are they buying? What are these people buying?

00:27:16 Speaker_03
I have to talk to, I don't know Steve Mnuchin, but I do know Frank and Bobby. I should probably just call them and ask them what their reasoning is. Anyway, we'll see, but watch that space.

00:27:27 Speaker_03
I think it's gonna be a big deal and it matters to companies like Snap is really benefiting from this as it would make sense. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Trump reveals his new AI and crypto czar.

00:27:39 Speaker_03
We'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Vivian Tu, about becoming Gen Z's financial guru.

00:27:48 Speaker_09
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00:29:49 Speaker_03
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Visit Tile.com today to use code PIVOT to get 15% off. That's Tile.com code PIVOT. Scott, we're back. President-elect Donald Trump named investor, podcaster, and Elon Musk minion David Sachs to a newly created role of AI and crypto czar.

00:31:04 Speaker_03
Trump said in an announcement that Sachs will safeguard free speech online and steer us away from big tech bias and censorship. Like Elon, Sachs will be a special government employee.

00:31:13 Speaker_03
He will reportedly still remain with his VC fund, of course, and won't have to go through Senate confirmation. Thank goodness. for him. This is not someone I like in any way, as I reported on for many years.

00:31:26 Speaker_03
He ran a bunch of different companies, sold one to Microsoft, one of the lesser financial social medias, I forget the name of it.

00:31:34 Speaker_03
Made some money, has spent a lot of time following Musk around, that seems to be, or other smarter people like Peter Thiel at PayPal. He was one of the PayPal mafia, but I wouldn't say he was Tony Soprano in any way. I don't know.

00:31:50 Speaker_03
I don't know what he's going to do. I think he's a blowhard. I think he is unpleasant. I don't know what to say. He said I had the single most vitriolic voice in the tech ecosystem. So he's not a fan of mine.

00:32:03 Speaker_03
I wrote, I would look at some of the reporting I did on Sachs. Some of it was good. He was a decent entrepreneur. I wouldn't say he was the top entrepreneur I ever dealt with. It's fine.

00:32:13 Speaker_03
And I wrote a story about him in 2016 that he didn't like much about apologizing for parts of a book he co-wrote with Peter Thiel in the 1990s where he said rape was, sometimes rape was belated regret.

00:32:25 Speaker_03
It was really, and he apologized for it, that wasn't great. You know, whatever, he did that. I just don't like the cut of his jib, as they say. I don't know what he's going to do. I don't know if there's any real influence here.

00:32:40 Speaker_03
But he certainly, he spoke at the Republican National Convention. He did a big fundraiser for Trump. He likes to pontificate on Twitter. He's just a blowhard. We'll see. We'll see if he has real power to do anything.

00:32:51 Speaker_03
He'll certainly terrorize people on Twitter and etc. Things like that. Any thoughts?

00:32:57 Speaker_09
Look, I don't like the way these guys equip themselves around how they treat you. You know, I've had one guy tweet about me 445 times as part of that mafia, but it's mostly out of insecurity and that he just wants to fuck me, but... He doesn't.

00:33:10 Speaker_09
Oh, he does. No, I've never had someone want me as badly as this guy wants me, clearly.

00:33:16 Speaker_03
We know who he is. He's part of the gang there.

00:33:18 Speaker_09
But he has no power, so it's not a threat to me. The folks with some real power, I think David is a smart guy, and David has real money.

00:33:25 Speaker_09
and his buddy Elon, for whatever reason, they seem to be, I think at one point Elon called you the definition of pure evil. He decided that was the tweet he was gonna put out.

00:33:37 Speaker_03
That is just so- I'm not sure, that was Yoel, I was something else. But yeah, in that range, Yoel Roth was the definition of pure, I can't remember. They always do it. They dunk on everybody, but go ahead.

00:33:48 Speaker_09
Okay, that's how you reflect your blessings. And I can't stand the general shitposting of America by the people who, if they lived in any other country, would, you know, be the, you know, selling Subarus and wherever in Ecuador.

00:34:02 Speaker_09
They just wouldn't... Anyway, when you join the government, you get, not in this position, I don't believe, but if you become treasury secretary, you get this unbelievable perk. And that is, and Hank Paulson enjoyed this perk, you become,

00:34:18 Speaker_09
exempt from taxes on the sales of stock.

00:34:21 Speaker_02
You get to, but- My ex-wife did that, my ex-wife did that.

00:34:24 Speaker_09
Right, but the reason they do that is because they need you to sell your stock, because when you have the most influential organization in the world, the U.S.

00:34:33 Speaker_09
government, making business decisions for tens, hundreds of billions of dollars, they don't want you to own stock.

00:34:41 Speaker_09
And the idea that someone is going to have influence over what are the most high intensity valuation creation and destruction sectors right now, AI and crypto, but also maintain it. I don't have a problem.

00:34:54 Speaker_09
Trump gets to pick his guys and his guys who throw fundraisers for him.

00:34:59 Speaker_02
No, everybody does it.

00:35:00 Speaker_09
I've never listened to their show, but I've seen clips on TikTok, and I think David is a smart guy.

00:35:06 Speaker_09
The problem is there's no fucking way he should be able to maintain his position as a venture capitalist while dictating and advising on policy and regulation around AI and crypto.

00:35:17 Speaker_09
I mean, you want to talk about setting up an environment where there's absolutely no guardrails and where retail investors

00:35:24 Speaker_03
And they're not here to help everybody, right? Once you get that job, I think you do rise to the fucking occasion and, like, treat everybody equal.

00:35:30 Speaker_03
But, like, Sam Altman, after X, took to X after the SACS announcement to post his congratulations in this polite way. Elon responded with a laughing, crying emoji. These guys are like, it's just ridiculous.

00:35:43 Speaker_03
They're like, oh, now we're running the bar, right? That kind of thing. By the way, the Elon tweet was, I have rarely seen evil in as pure a form as Yoel Roth and Kara Swisher's heart is filled with seething hate.

00:35:54 Speaker_09
Seething hate.

00:35:57 Speaker_03
And I was vitriolic.

00:35:58 Speaker_09
Your heart is filled with seething hate.

00:36:02 Speaker_03
Yeah. Yeah. I just think they're not in it for everyone. They're in it for themselves. And so, like, you know, if you get this fucking job, David, act like you work for the whole United States of America.

00:36:11 Speaker_03
Don't take part in this juvenile... Listen, I don't like this guy.

00:36:15 Speaker_09
He's not at fault here because... It's the administration that has decided to let people dictate massive flows of capital or a lack of regulation while maintaining economic interest in this.

00:36:28 Speaker_03
They don't care. No conflict, no interest. Right? No interest, no conflict. Whatever. Whatever. Remember that is? No conflict, no interest. That kind of thing. They're just, it's so cynical. It is not about the United States of America.

00:36:39 Speaker_03
They will favor their friends. They will hurt their enemies. It feels like that. Like that's where we're headed. And that's what a rinky dink third world country does. I'm sorry, it's not the United States of America.

00:36:50 Speaker_03
You know, all the minions are coming in. I call them the minions.

00:36:54 Speaker_09
I literally for a moment, I heard someone send me something saying, one of the all in guys is going into the administration. I'm like, oh my God. And I had for a moment, I'm like, let me guess. Chamath is going to be head of the SEC.

00:37:05 Speaker_03
Oh, wow.

00:37:05 Speaker_09
I'm like, it's going to be spack mania.

00:37:08 Speaker_03
Spack mania. Oh, God. These people, again, they're so poor. All they have is money. Another Elon Minion and tech billionaire during the team, Jared Isaacman, has been nominated for NASA administrator.

00:37:20 Speaker_03
Isaacman is a founder and CEO of payment processing company Shift 4, which makes him, he's flown to space twice on commercial SpaceX missions. Obviously, he's qualified.

00:37:30 Speaker_03
running NASA, whatever, this is like, you know, then he can get send these contracts to SpaceX, which has a lot of them. But there's no facade of fairness in any of this. It's all like, Elon's guys, like, this is like, throughout the thing.

00:37:46 Speaker_03
And I guess, you know, he spent a quarter of a bit more than a quarter billion dollars to help Trump win the election. And I guess to the victor goes the spoils.

00:37:54 Speaker_03
In a third-world country, most of the money went through his America PAC, although Elon also gave $20 million. He was the only funder to the RBG PAC, a super PAC that suggested Trump and the late Justice Ginsburg were aligned on abortion rights.

00:38:07 Speaker_03
Her family is horrified, and he was the funder of this. It's still the single best investment of the year, possibly the century. And as you remember, he said he wasn't gonna be donating to either candidate early this year in March.

00:38:21 Speaker_03
I called him out on that, said he was lying. And it turns out I was correct, but he gets all the stuff. There we are.

00:38:27 Speaker_09
It used to be until very recently that people who gave money and people that was like rolled their eyes would find, okay, you're Howard Leach, who invested in one of my companies, nice man investor, so they let him be ambassador to France.

00:38:42 Speaker_09
It's payola, right? Ambassadorships, unless it was China or the UK or something strategic, who gave us money, fine, they get those jobs.

00:38:52 Speaker_09
But the hardcore stuff that was about American security and prosperity and running actual government was based on veracity, credibility, stature, intellect, experience. All that, these are all now ambassadorships. It's who gave the most money.

00:39:06 Speaker_09
And this guy, I don't, this guy's actually a thoughtful, successful guy who's passionate about space, but he doesn't understand, he doesn't understand government.

00:39:17 Speaker_09
I mean, he does have, he wasn't evangelist for Hubble, but he has no real domain expertise around our space program or how it actually works or the relationship between the private and the public sectors.

00:39:30 Speaker_09
So all of a sudden we've just gone, hey, who wants to be secretary?

00:39:34 Speaker_03
I can see them sitting in a room. Can you see them sitting in a room? Like, what do you want to be? Why don't you run CIA? You like James Bond movies.

00:39:45 Speaker_09
But when someone can give, and by the way, the numbers keep going up. The number I heard that Musk gave was 119 million. Now I hear it's a quarter of a billion. This guy gave a quarter of a billion dollars.

00:39:54 Speaker_09
I mean, if you think someone has a 50% chance likelihood of winning and you're a billionaire and you either have economic interests, it's a great investment to go two, three, $400 billion into a campaign.

00:40:08 Speaker_09
We're gonna see someone give a billion dollars to a candidate in the next campaign. If you're worth $5 or $10 billion, why not give $250 million so you can run NASA or maybe, who knows, be Attorney General?

00:40:21 Speaker_03
I mean... Yeah, I know. It's seriously, it's pay for play. It's coin-op presidency. It's just like, my favorite is lying about it back in March. When I said that, I got pilloried by the Elon. I'm like, he's totally backing Trump. Give me a break.

00:40:33 Speaker_03
He's going to hand over money and buy influence, essentially, not allegedly. But it seemed so obvious to me that this was what he was going to do. But yeah, he's doing a play, as usual. Elon is innovative. Innovative Elon, in terms of days.

00:40:48 Speaker_03
This has been going on for centuries.

00:40:49 Speaker_09
He's increased his wealth by $130 or $150 billion. That $250 million bet was the best trade of 2024.

00:40:58 Speaker_03
Anyway, well, we'll see where it goes. Good luck, Dave. The only thing I'm upset about, God, is they're going to be in Washington now and I might run into them.

00:41:06 Speaker_03
I'm like, I escaped, I crossed the country to get away from these people and there they are. They're going to be, odds that I'll run into each of these chodes. I'm just like, fuck, what the fuck, get out of my town.

00:41:20 Speaker_09
Your heart is seething with hate.

00:41:22 Speaker_03
I am seething. I'm seething with like, oh, for fuck's sake, that's what I'm seething with. Anyway, so let's bring in our friend of Pivot. Vivian Tu is the host of the Vox Media podcast, Net Worth and Chill.

00:41:39 Speaker_03
She's also known as your rich BFF on social media, where she's become a financial guru of sorts, dispensing advice and tips to millions of followers. Vivian, welcome. Thank you so much for having me.

00:41:50 Speaker_03
There's been iterations of what you're doing for many years, and lots of newspapers I used to work for, all kinds of stuff. And I just love this kind of thing, but what you're doing is really particularly important for young people.

00:42:00 Speaker_03
So for people not familiar with your rich BFF, can you explain what it's about? And you have found a way, as many writers in this area do, to make it understandable and accessible, especially to young people.

00:42:13 Speaker_03
I'd love to know what you think traditional media gets wrong when it comes to financial literacy. So explain what Rich BFF is and then how is it different from previous iterations of this?

00:42:23 Speaker_01
Yeah, I think for a really long time, a lot of us have just wanted to be heard or even seen. And traditional financial media has very much catered to folks who look like Scott and probably have as much money as he does.

00:42:39 Speaker_01
I joke, but transparently, it really hasn't offered much to women, to people of color, to young people, people who grew up low income, immigrants, anything of that nature.

00:42:51 Speaker_01
It's really hard to find good, reputable information in this space because when you Google the words Roth IRA, you get 3 million hits. And if you don't know what you don't know, you really don't know which of these links to even click.

00:43:06 Speaker_01
So it's really hard to begin that journey because jargon is so rampant in the financial news media that we're seeing in writing, on TV, everywhere.

00:43:16 Speaker_01
But what Your Rich BFF does, essentially, is it is a financial equity platform that's breaking down this information for the next generation so that everybody can have access to it and then implement it into their daily lives.

00:43:28 Speaker_01
It's actual usable, actionable tips versus, oh, in theory, this could happen. It's, you know, this is how you actually make your life better.

00:43:36 Speaker_03
And talk about what, who are you aiming at? What does Rich BFF mean? Is it just, you know, because it's fun on social media or what's the concept behind it?

00:43:45 Speaker_01
Yeah, the big concept behind it is, you know, my friends had come to me for this kind of information, for these tips, for this advice. And the whole premise, everybody focuses so much on rich, but the real word that we should be focusing on is BFF.

00:44:00 Speaker_01
I'm not lecturing you like a college professor. I am not talking to you like I'm a parent. I'm not talking to you like I'm better than you, smarter than you, richer than you. I'm talking to you as a friend.

00:44:11 Speaker_01
What advice would a rich friend give you in this arena if they wanted to see you succeed, if they wanted to see you do well? Excellent. Scott?

00:44:20 Speaker_09
So just full disclosure, I love Vivian too. I don't know if you've noticed this. I'm not quite stalker level yet, but I'm constantly retweeting her stuff. I think you are a gift.

00:44:35 Speaker_01
Thank you.

00:44:35 Speaker_09
I think you are a gift to young people. I love your content. I love the optimistic tone you bring. The first a person under the age of, I don't know how old you are, 30, that talks about 1202.

00:44:47 Speaker_09
And there's this myth that you're not supposed to talk about money, which I think is nothing but an attempt by the rich to keep poor down, to create a sort of taboo, and I love how you're breaking that taboo.

00:44:57 Speaker_09
I want to repurpose the question that I got from a gentleman on another show because I got insecure that I didn't answer it correctly. So I want to give you a shot at it.

00:45:06 Speaker_09
But a gentleman in his 50s said him and his partner have saved some money, not a lot, but they're really risk averse. So they have it all probably in money market and they've missed out on a lot of returns.

00:45:16 Speaker_09
So what would you suggest someone with a little bit of money that wants to start investing? What would be your asset allocation recommendation kind of loosely?

00:45:26 Speaker_01
Yeah, I think with terms of asset allocations, what I typically recommend is you take your age and you round to the nearest 10s, so 10s, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and then you actually subtract by 10 again.

00:45:42 Speaker_01
So this person is in their 50s, we are minusing that number by 10 again, so 40. And that is what percentage of your portfolio roughly should be in fixed income assets. Whereas the rest of it should actually still be in the public equity market.

00:45:57 Speaker_01
So stocks in particular, I recommend broader index funds through ETFs with the lowest possible expense ratios.

00:46:05 Speaker_01
The reason I say this is just because now that they're in their 50s, even if they are feeling a little behind, they don't have to feel like the world is ending.

00:46:16 Speaker_01
Yes, they wanna do some sort of preservation of their existing wealth so that they're going to have money to draw from.

00:46:22 Speaker_01
in their later years, but also still having more than 50% of your portfolio in the public equity markets allows you to participate in that continued growth.

00:46:32 Speaker_01
Odds are good, the second they turn 59 and a half, they're not going to need every single dollar in that account.

00:46:38 Speaker_01
So this just gives them a chance to have a portion of their money continuing to work pretty hard while another portion of it is still set aside because they are getting closer to retirement.

00:46:47 Speaker_01
And the other big hot tip that I would encourage them to think about is catch up contributions.

00:46:52 Speaker_01
For everybody who is above 50 and starting to get a little closer to retirement, you can actually contribute more to your individual retirement accounts, whether they be of the traditional or Roth variety, or your employer-sponsored accounts than the average person could that's younger than that.

00:47:08 Speaker_01
And it just gives them a chance to literally catch up.

00:47:10 Speaker_09
That was great, thank you.

00:47:12 Speaker_03
Yeah, maximize things like that on that, especially the matching stuff. Obviously, the stock market's been on a tear. People are worried about it being on a tear right now, and most people in the stock market are people that look like Scott, right?

00:47:23 Speaker_03
Everyone's not in the Scott stock market. It's a small group of people, but it tends to affect us mentally.

00:47:29 Speaker_09
Wait, wait, tall and handsome? What do you mean looks like me? What do you mean looks like me?

00:47:34 Speaker_03
Yes, that's it, tall and handsome.

00:47:35 Speaker_09
It's more diverse than you think. It's about rich people. It's not about a specific gender or race.

00:47:38 Speaker_03
I understand, but oddly enough, they tend to look the same. So what do you think the biggest, I'm just teasing, I tease, I tease. What do you think the biggest change for the economy and markets when Trump takes office?

00:47:49 Speaker_03
Obviously, he just said he wasn't going to try to get rid of Jerome Powell. Who knows? He could change his mind in seconds if he doesn't like something. But what are you looking at? Obviously, there could be a big stock rally. Does that matter?

00:48:00 Speaker_03
You know, there could be a tax cut. Does that matter? What are you looking at?

00:48:04 Speaker_01
Yeah, I mean, just going off of what he has openly said, realistically, we're going to see corporate tax cuts. We're going to see rollbacks on regulation. We are already seeing one of the richest, most money cabinets ever, period.

00:48:20 Speaker_01
And what is problematic to me about this is this is very much going to see a further K-shaped diversion between the have and have-nots. Folks that are already investing are going to be able to participate in these profits, right?

00:48:38 Speaker_01
Because when corporations are given tax breaks and are rolled back on regulation, they're going to prioritize one thing and one thing only. They're going to make money.

00:48:46 Speaker_01
They are going to do right by their shareholders, which is excellent if you are a shareholder. But when we actually look at the distribution of wealth, of who is actually investing versus who isn't,

00:48:57 Speaker_01
It's much easier when you have discretionary funds to invest. If you are more worried about buying apples than apple, you're not gonna be participating in that upward growth. So we're going to see-.

00:49:08 Speaker_03
Right, and tariffs on time, I forgot to mention tariffs, right?

00:49:11 Speaker_01
Exactly, yes.

00:49:11 Speaker_03
And she said, on this interview yesterday, he's like, yeah, it could cost more. Well.

00:49:15 Speaker_01
Yeah, but it could cost more.

00:49:17 Speaker_01
Oh, well, like, that's really unfortunate, because when you actually think about how rich people and broke people spend, and I say that like very glib tongue in cheek, but like, we still all have to buy some of the same things, right?

00:49:31 Speaker_01
Regardless of if you're super moneyed or not, you're buying toilet paper. But the ultra luxurious, organic, triple-ply toilet paper is probably only a couple dollars more than the crappy generic brand that's one-ply.

00:49:44 Speaker_01
We all still have to buy it, and unfortunately,

00:49:47 Speaker_01
These tariffs are going to make toilet paper a much larger portion of someone who is a lower income individual, a larger portion of their paycheck than it is versus someone who is in the higher net worth area.

00:49:59 Speaker_01
So we're going to see people in the bottom 50% really struggle with their cost of living. They're realistically not always going to be able to invest because they don't have those discretionary funds.

00:50:11 Speaker_01
shit's gonna get tough, for lack of a better phrase. But for the top 50%, like, especially people who are high net worth, this is going to be a golden era of moneymaking.

00:50:21 Speaker_09
I would actually go, I bet it's more like top 10 or one.

00:50:24 Speaker_03
Yeah. Yeah. I was talking to some of my relatives who have lesser jobs than I do, right? They're just, they're more paycheck to paycheck people. And they were like doing their, you know, their dunking on me, like, oh, Trump won.

00:50:36 Speaker_03
I'm like, good for my money. Yeah, I was like, you realize I will do great and you will not. Just FYI. But thanks for the vote. Like, I didn't know what to say. Like, I was like, are you? But no, they think they're going to do better. They do.

00:50:49 Speaker_01
They absolutely think that. Well, I just think that like this election, generally speaking, was The people who are voting for both parties, we voted against our own best interests. Only one specific set, though, knew that we were doing that, right?

00:51:07 Speaker_01
So you're talking about these coastal elites voting blue, realistically having more money, being closer to that. And frankly, Scott's probably right, 50% is incredibly generous. The top 10, top 1% of folks.

00:51:19 Speaker_01
A lot of them voted for Kamala Harris, well against their own best interests, knowing that we would be taxed more. I transparently voted that way.

00:51:29 Speaker_01
But I have family and relatives who voted the opposite side, and they're trying to tell me that they are going to benefit. And I said, no, people like me, people who a huge portion of my annual Like, money comes from investments, not just my labor.

00:51:49 Speaker_01
I am going to benefit, not you. And I think it's a hard conversation to have, especially around the Thanksgiving dinner table with family, with friends. I think we all voted against our best interests, financially speaking.

00:52:05 Speaker_09
How do you make money? What's your business model? And what advice would you give to people who look at you and think, I'd like that job? What's your business model? How do you make money?

00:52:17 Speaker_09
any tips on getting started or if and when there was some sort of like seminal strategy or moment that helped kind of elevate you to being, you know, a guest on Pivot, which is a crowning achievement.

00:52:30 Speaker_01
It is, it is. So I got very lucky. I will say luck has quite a lot to do with it, because my very first video went viral. That is very strange, that doesn't happen for most people. But my first video ended up getting 3 million views on TikTok.

00:52:48 Speaker_01
And from there, I continued to post every single day. I will say, this is one of the things that I'm most proud about myself, is that I took my Wall Street work ethic, where I cut my teeth, and put it into this, into Your Rich BFF.

00:53:03 Speaker_01
When people were getting tired and saying, I don't feel like making a video today, I kept churning them out. And so now I have a very diversified business.

00:53:11 Speaker_01
I'm very proud of that because I think a lot of us struggle with the idea of the I word influencer. It's like you turn out a bunch of brand deals and then suddenly within two years people have forgotten about you.

00:53:24 Speaker_01
I've diversified my business so that still the lion's share of my income comes from branded partnerships. I get paid directly from platforms for creating content that gets a lot of eyeballs. I get paid to speak.

00:53:37 Speaker_01
I got a book advance for my first book, just signed for my second one. My podcast itself has ads on it. And then in addition to that, currently working on a tech platform that is going to be direct to consumer.

00:53:51 Speaker_01
That's still not ready to be rolled out yet, but I did wanna tease that here. So there's just a lot of ways that I make money. To help people with financial tools and things like that.

00:54:01 Speaker_09
Just some follow-up questions. Which of those businesses is growing the fastest? And in your mind, which platforms are on the way up, way down as it relates to your business?

00:54:11 Speaker_01
Yeah, I think brand partnerships is still the lion's share of my income. It has grown very much so this year, especially as people have become, I would say, more financially aware.

00:54:25 Speaker_01
Even brands that normally wouldn't target a financially minded audience are like, okay, how do we speak to people now that everybody's worried about their wallet, what's in it and what is not in it?

00:54:36 Speaker_01
So brand partnerships, but also speaking, I would say. With the sale of my first book, with that launch, hitting the New York Times bestseller list, suddenly there were a lot of inquiries for my speaking.

00:54:49 Speaker_01
So that's something that's growing very quickly. And I think one thing that I have still been kind of trying to mull over is the whole Is TikTok getting banned? Is something going to happen? Is there going to be a sale?

00:55:05 Speaker_01
But regardless, I think I've set myself up in a good position because if TikTok sticks around, great. It's one more platform where I'm able to create content and share it. But if not, I have really diversified my audience to other platforms.

00:55:20 Speaker_01
And ultimately, those hours of watch time, that attention, doesn't just dissipate. It's going to go somewhere else. And realistically, I'm guessing it'll probably go to places like Instagram and YouTube Shorts.

00:55:33 Speaker_03
Yeah, so you have this big TikTok following. Are you concerned? What's the plan?

00:55:39 Speaker_01
I'm not as concerned, I think, as some other creators who've really, really leaned into TikTok being their main, you know, cash cow.

00:55:49 Speaker_01
I have tried very hard to make sure that I have a strong following across TikTok, across Instagram, across Facebook, across YouTube, across Snapchat. Like, when everyone was making fun of me for posting on Facebook saying that

00:56:02 Speaker_01
nobody was watching my content on Facebook.

00:56:05 Speaker_01
Now, I feel so smart that I was able to do that and diversify my audience because I'm gonna still be able to reach them, not to mention me having built my own roster of BFFs, my own newsletter, my own mailing list, so I can speak to them directly.

00:56:20 Speaker_03
Right, absolutely, don't listen to them. You don't have to be hip. So one financial tip or habit you'd recommend for people going into the year? I have two sons just understanding money now.

00:56:30 Speaker_03
I spend a lot of time them learning about things like paying the rent and costs. And my one son's leaving college, and I'm like, so what are you gonna do to make money? The mom train is ending soon, or relatively soon.

00:56:44 Speaker_03
So what financial tip or habit would you recommend, besides getting a job, obviously, going into the new year?

00:56:50 Speaker_01
Yeah, man, this is a good one. I would say find your ikigai. But in part, I really encourage people to prioritize the can I make money of this.

00:57:02 Speaker_01
So ikigai is a Japanese term essentially saying that you are able to find your purpose once your thing fits four categories. One of which is, do I like doing this? Am I good at it? Does the world need it? And can I make money?

00:57:18 Speaker_01
So once you've found something that fits into all four of these circles, it's like the center of the Venn diagram.

00:57:23 Speaker_01
And we give this advice, especially to students going into higher education, of follow your passion, you know, whatever you want to do, like whatever your hobbies are. No, I'm so sorry.

00:57:35 Speaker_09
The world doesn't need another DJ and no one's going to pay you for it.

00:57:38 Speaker_01
Exactly. Like we need plumbers, we need electricians, we need people who have real skills. And I laugh because I come from a Chinese immigrant family, so that was never on the table for me.

00:57:51 Speaker_01
I was never going to be allowed to major in certain majors because there was no opportunity to make money and my parents weren't going to be able to help me after school or anything like that.

00:58:03 Speaker_01
Generational wealth, you have the luxury of following your passion. But if you are a regular shmegular person with a regular shmegular family, and not to mention lower income, pick a job that is going to create the lifestyle that you want.

00:58:17 Speaker_01
Prioritize your lifestyle because you are not defined by your job. But if you do not have the life that you want, you're going to be sorely unhappy.

00:58:25 Speaker_03
Excellent answer. Excellent answer. It depends. It also is what it is. You know what the job happens to be. You know, something that you like to. You can't like things that you don't. Was that too practical? No, it wasn't.

00:58:35 Speaker_03
But you should also like what you're doing. You know, you shouldn't, like, if you can't, if you can't like it. It doesn't have to make a lot of money, but then you have to adjust what the lifestyle is.

00:58:44 Speaker_09
I find when you make a shit ton of money at something, you start really liking it. You start really loving it. I deal with this really difficult woman on this podcast and I don't love it, but we're making bank. I like podcasting.

00:59:00 Speaker_09
So Vivian, the thing about low cost index funds is you're still stock picking. You're just stock picking at a macro level because there's different index funds. There's QQ, there's NASDAQ, which is more aggressive.

00:59:10 Speaker_09
There's still some quote unquote selection around which indices you invest in. Do you believe

00:59:17 Speaker_09
And this is a loaded question, because obviously I'm putting forward a bias here, that the American market has gotten so expensive, relatively speaking, to emerging or non-American markets based on traditional PEs, that people should be thinking about index funds outside of the US and maybe rebalancing their portfolio and putting more money.

00:59:36 Speaker_09
I mean, you're basically Your whole rap, and it's the most powerful rap, is around diversification. You don't need to find the needle, buy the whole haystack.

00:59:46 Speaker_09
But do you think, given how expensive the American market is, and quite frankly, how cheap some of the emerging or non-American markets, that people should be thinking about allocating a greater percentage of their portfolio to index funds outside of the US?

00:59:59 Speaker_01
Yes, absolutely. It's so funny. I feel like you teed me up for this one. You don't want to, again, be overexposed in any one specific arena. And I think to your point, like, even with general U.S.

01:00:15 Speaker_01
index funds, like, what is it, like, 85 percent of the returns came from six companies? Like, you are to a degree, like, very, very exposed. I love looking at, I believe the ticker is VXUS. So that's like a Vanguard fund.

01:00:32 Speaker_01
Every single different brokerage.

01:00:34 Speaker_08
Everything but the US.

01:00:35 Speaker_01
Correct. Yeah. So as long as you are, it makes sense, right? Like VXUS. Yeah. Every single brokerage has their own version of this. So make sure you're getting the one that's at the brokerage you are investing with so you aren't paying additional fees.

01:00:49 Speaker_01
But you can not only just invest in index funds domestically speaking, but having something like that that is going to give you broader band exposure across the globe is very, very smart. I think the tricky piece is, What?

01:01:05 Speaker_01
Because people don't want to sit there and be like, OK, well, which of these countries has like a strong economic situation right now?

01:01:12 Speaker_09
Like Brazil or South Korea?

01:01:13 Speaker_01
Yeah, exactly. Like they don't want to sit there and be like, OK, like, should I invest in like a BRICS country? Like they want to just have it done for them.

01:01:20 Speaker_01
And if you want that, I think there are, again, index funds out there that are going to be able to help you do that in a very easy way where you can buy one thing. and get exposure to the rest of the globe.

01:01:30 Speaker_03
Great, okay, perfect. Vivian, we'll have you back and talk to us about Bitcoin. We're not gonna go into it right now in time, but we'll talk about that next. All right, because a lot of young people are creating it.

01:01:38 Speaker_09
I love Vivian, too. I think she's fantastic.

01:01:40 Speaker_03
Vivian, you're coming on again.

01:01:42 Speaker_09
I think she's fantastic. I love you guys. We should get a podcast for her on Vox. Oh, wait.

01:01:47 Speaker_03
Oh, she does, yeah. Speaking of which, people can find you on social media. Your Rich BFF and your podcast is Net Worth and Chill. What a good name. Thank you so much, Vivian.

01:01:57 Speaker_09
Congrats, Vivian.

01:01:58 Speaker_03
Thank you guys so much for having me. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. Support for Pivot comes from AT&T. What does it feel like to get a new iPhone 16 Pro with AT&T next up anytime?

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01:05:15 Speaker_03
OK, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. You go first this week.

01:05:19 Speaker_09
Well, these are both good things, so I don't know how to categorize them as wins or fails. But Bashar al-Assad, who's arguably one of the most murderous people in recent history, was forced to flee after rebels took control of Damascus.

01:05:30 Speaker_09
And there's a decent amount of insecurity around. The devil you know versus the devil you don't know. It's not like these are good people who've taken over, but... But we don't know.

01:05:40 Speaker_02
They've changed, but go ahead.

01:05:41 Speaker_09
Yeah, we don't know. And right now Israel is bombing military installations to Syria because they don't want these new folks to have access to this stuff.

01:05:49 Speaker_09
But this is someone who used gas on his own people, killed somewhere between half a million and a million of his countrymen. no one seemed, quite frankly, to be that outraged about it. But anyways, another talk show.

01:06:00 Speaker_09
But what people don't realize is that as much as we shitpost America and we're angry about it, our support in conjunction with our allies in Western Europe, our support of Ukraine has basically made it impossible.

01:06:13 Speaker_09
And also Israel's attack on the proxies of Iran have dramatically weakened the allies Iran and Russia respectively, the Bashar al-Assad turned to to save his ass.

01:06:24 Speaker_09
And the reason they're weakened is because right now Russia is losing 1,500 people a day in Ukraine as Ukrainian army with drone technology and Western aid is proving to be

01:06:36 Speaker_09
proving to be the ultimate underdog that no one ever thought could put up this sort of fight. And Russia has its own problems right now. And when Bashar called Putin, he said, sorry, boss, we got our own shit to take care of.

01:06:48 Speaker_09
And then when they called Iran, whose proxies, Hamas, Houthis, and Hezbollah, and also Syria, their hands have been cut off and their air defenses are weakened. People don't give enough credit to the West and that is we are toppling dictators.

01:07:06 Speaker_09
Do you think Putin is really strong right now? You don't think the Islamic regime in Iran is really worried right now?

01:07:11 Speaker_09
And the thing that disappoints me is that young people and Americans get angry and upset about everything America, and they don't realize that democracies, our commitment to the military, our military expenditures, our allies, our intelligence apparatus,

01:07:26 Speaker_09
are winning. We are a formidable force and we are not getting the credit. People are not recognizing the incredible work of our security apparatus, how strong we are when we're allied with people and the impact it is having on very

01:07:42 Speaker_09
just how difficult we are making it for very bad people.

01:07:46 Speaker_09
And I'm disappointed that the media doesn't recognize and people don't recognize how wonderful a victory this is and what wonderful things it says about the alliance between the US, Israel, and Europe.

01:07:58 Speaker_09
We are making the lives of very bad people much more difficult right now. Anyways, I don't know if that's my win or fail. And my win, and this is a weird one, is do you remember the governor of Texas that ran for president?

01:08:12 Speaker_09
I think his name was Governor Perry, Rick Perry?

01:08:15 Speaker_02
Yeah. Yeah, I remember he didn't come off rather well. He seemed dumb.

01:08:19 Speaker_09
He lasted for a hot minute. But I liked him because he was very handsome. I also thought he was quite reasonable.

01:08:24 Speaker_09
And he said on a public debate stage before all this anti-vax misinformation, he said he signed into law mandatory HPV vaccines for girls in schools. And there was a lot of pushback. And he said on stage, he said, well, you know what? I hate cancer.

01:08:42 Speaker_09
So there's this wonderful news that this vaccine for HPV has been found in a peer-reviewed study to reduce cervical cancer by 62%. So think about this. A two-thirds reduction in what is a terrible cancer that does happen to young women

01:09:02 Speaker_09
has been eliminated. And there's even evidence that a new, more advanced form of an HPV vaccine has the possibility or the potential to eradicate cervical cancer.

01:09:14 Speaker_09
This is just such wonderful news on what continues to be one of the great gifts of our modern economy, and that is vaccines.

01:09:21 Speaker_03
Those are great ones. I'm sure you're going to love this, but I have two actually positive ones and one very short negative one is Taylor Swift's Erastor is over a record $2 billion in ticket sales. Just crazy.

01:09:34 Speaker_03
The amount of and the economic impact of this woman is enormous. That's just $2 billion. It doubled the gross of its closest competitor over 21 months and now it's the end of it. Congratulations as a business person.

01:09:47 Speaker_03
So much economic benefit from one person's creativity. Whether you like her or not, Scott, she makes some dope. I never said I didn't like her.

01:09:54 Speaker_09
I just don't love her music.

01:09:55 Speaker_03
Yeah, that's great. She makes a ton of money. So let me say, what an incredible economic for everybody. Did you see her?

01:10:02 Speaker_09
I saw her.

01:10:03 Speaker_03
I did. I went. Yeah, I loved it. But the economic benefits were enormous, just enormous, really quite something. And real money that was based on real things. I really appreciated that.

01:10:16 Speaker_03
And some of this crypto stuff going on makes me nervous, young men trading. But this was real money made by a really great entrepreneur, so congratulations to Tosha.

01:10:26 Speaker_03
And very briefly, for another positive, very quick, Dick Van Dyke, dancing in a Coldplay video. Oh, that's great. 99 years old. Amazing dancer, every year of his life, an amazing, amazing dancer. entertainer, person.

01:10:40 Speaker_03
If you listen to him talk, what a decent person he is. 99 years, looks fantastic, dancing his life out. Love that Dick Van Dyke. Love him so much, I can't even say how much I love Dick Van Dyke. And I just had my kids watch Mary Poppins, which he's in.

01:10:55 Speaker_03
He's fantastic. My negative thing, I think, is people, what Biden is going to have to do in the next month, I guess, You know, he's just, the EPA banned two cancer-causing chemicals used in everyday products.

01:11:09 Speaker_03
They're trying to get into the wires, one's in dry cleaning, trying to get past all these things. He's urged to empty federal death rows before Trump takes office, pardons.

01:11:19 Speaker_03
There was a back and forth with Liz Cheney, who doesn't seem to want a federal pardon, but what he's going to do. And some of them, I'm like, ugh, don't do this, because it's against the rule of law, right, in the opposite way.

01:11:32 Speaker_03
And the second part is then Trump says members of the January 6th committee should be jailed, he said it in an interview. I mean, again, third world country antics.

01:11:41 Speaker_03
And so I don't envy the decisions Joe Biden is going to make because he wants to sort of be the rule of law guy, but at the same time, this is unprecedented for an incoming president to say he wants people doing their jobs.

01:11:55 Speaker_03
of the January 6th committee with zero proof, by the way, zero, zero, zero. And everything he said was wrong in that interview with Kristen Welker doing this.

01:12:04 Speaker_03
It's threatening, it's demented, it's an escalation in threats to these members, said they should be prosecuted for their lies. He accused them of treason last year. especially Liz Cheney, and her response, astonishing.

01:12:19 Speaker_03
She is a brave, I don't care what you think of her, she stands for the rule of law. And I know people don't like her because of the war stuff, et cetera, et cetera. But just really disturbing, that interview, in many ways. You should go listen to it.

01:12:33 Speaker_03
Okay, that's my wits advance.

01:12:34 Speaker_09
It's funny, just going back to your win about Taylor Swift, my car took it in because it was making a whining noise and all they needed to do was take the Taylor Swift CD out.

01:12:43 Speaker_03
You will never acknowledge women killing it. Hold on. Men can literally do a small thing.

01:12:49 Speaker_09
I'm not exaggerating. She waved at me in the crowd. I didn't wave back. So you can expect another album and tour in the next few months.

01:12:55 Speaker_03
All right, okay, whatever. Anyway, I loved you, Taylor. Good for you.

01:12:59 Speaker_09
By the way, she's a fantastic professional, pays her people well, puts on a great show. Not a ton of obvious surgery or profanity. I think she's a wonderful role model for young people. Oh, thank you. And I'm going to go see Wicked again.

01:13:12 Speaker_03
Okay, good. Did you see it?

01:13:14 Speaker_09
No, I didn't see it.

01:13:15 Speaker_03
I didn't think so. Don't go. I don't want to listen to your insulting of it.

01:13:18 Speaker_09
I'm sure it's great. I love

01:13:20 Speaker_03
Cynthia Erivo?

01:13:21 Speaker_09
Who's the hot one, the dated SNL guy?

01:13:24 Speaker_03
Ariana Grande is amazing.

01:13:25 Speaker_09
She's incredible.

01:13:26 Speaker_03
She's amazing. Actually, go see it. She's amazing. Oh, no, I want to see it.

01:13:29 Speaker_09
I heard it's great.

01:13:30 Speaker_03
It's great. You should see it. It's long, so pee before because of your elderly issues. My elderly issues.

01:13:36 Speaker_08
My elderly issues.

01:13:41 Speaker_03
Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT.

01:13:50 Speaker_03
I also want to mention a powerful interview I just did for On with Kara Swisher. I spoke to Megan Garcia, whose 14-year-old son took his own life after spending several months interacting with a character AI chatbot.

01:14:03 Speaker_03
Megan discussed why she's suing Google and Character AI and detailed her claims against these two companies. The question I asked was what she would say to the creators of this technology. Let's listen.

01:14:15 Speaker_00
It might not matter to them that there's a little boy in Orlando, Florida that is gone and a mother who is devastated, but it matters to my little family here. You know, and you shouldn't get to keep making products that are going to be hurting kids.

01:14:31 Speaker_00
You shouldn't get to master a dangerous product, train it to be super smart and turn around and ride your golden chariot back into Google.

01:14:39 Speaker_00
You shouldn't get to hurt children the way that you are hurting children, because you knew that this was dangerous when you did it. You knew that this was going to be a direct result of doing that.

01:14:50 Speaker_00
And you knew that you didn't have the quote unquote brand safety implications as a startup that Google had. So you felt like that was a license to do this. Like, that's unconscionable. It's immoral and it's wrong.

01:15:03 Speaker_03
This was a really tough interview. She's astonishing. And you'll see it's a very complex story. So I recommend everybody listen to it, Scott, especially we talk about this issue a lot.

01:15:12 Speaker_09
Yeah, I appreciate her courage and I appreciate you bringing the story to light. I don't think any of the sense until someone goes to jail.

01:15:18 Speaker_03
I agree. You know, one thing that I'll just note very quickly before we go is she has not been approached by any legislator to do something about this. This is just I am on the friggin phone with these people.

01:15:28 Speaker_03
And every time I talk to one, I said, you need to listen to this and do something about it.

01:15:33 Speaker_09
I should also note and this I'm very reticent to say this because I don't want to add to her pain. This also brings up some important issues around gun control, though. because the kid did find his stepfather's gun.

01:15:49 Speaker_09
And so this is a tragedy on a number of levels that brings up a warranted conversation on a variety of topics.

01:15:55 Speaker_03
Yeah, but let's start with this thing they made. So we'll see where it goes. Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Friday for more. Please read us out.

01:16:04 Speaker_09
Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and Todd engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Mia Saverio. Nishat Kerouas, Vox Media's executive producer of audio.

01:16:14 Speaker_09
Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod.

01:16:22 Speaker_09
We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

01:16:33 Speaker_07
Support for this episode comes from AWS. AWS Generative AI gives you the tools to power your business forward with the security and speed of the world's most experienced cloud.

01:16:46 Speaker_06
2025 is going to be a huge year for the tech industry. AI is either going to take over or maybe kind of start to go away.

01:16:54 Speaker_06
Regulation is going to continue and change the tech industry, or maybe a new president is going to change his mind about how all that is supposed to work.

01:17:01 Speaker_06
We're going to get new gadgets and new apps and new social platforms competing for our time and attention and new information about what it means to be a person on the internet and how we should be thinking about that.

01:17:12 Speaker_06
We have no idea what's coming next year, but on The Vergecast this month, we've decided to speculate wildly anyway. We're spending our time trying to figure out what's coming next year, what isn't, and what it all means. All that on The Vergecast.

01:17:25 Speaker_06
Presented by Polestar. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.